Former Court Reporters Plead Guilty To Racketeering Charges

The three former Cherokee County court reporters who were indicted last month on racketeering charges for allegedly siphoning the county out of hundreds of thousands of dollars are headed to jail.

Tammy Stine, Kimberly Probst and Betty Petersen, all of Woodstock, each entered guilty pleas during a two-hour hearing on Tuesday, the office of Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds said in a press release.

Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary E. Staley told the defendants that as court employees, “they should be held to a higher standard,” Reynolds’ office said in a press release.

Judge Staley sentenced Stine to serve eight months in jail, followed by eight years on probation. She was ordered to pay $225,000 in restitution, which she has already paid in full, and she was fined $1,000.

Judge Staley sentenced Probst to serve four months in jail, followed by 10 years on probation. She was also ordered to pay $50,000 in restitution, which she also paid in full on Tuesday. Petersen was sentenced to serve six months in jail, followed by 10 years on probation, and she also was ordered to pay $50,000 in restitution.

In addition, both Probst and Petersen were each fined $1,000.

Investigators discovered that since at least 2006, the trio expanded the spacing in official court transcripts to increase the number of pages transcribed, and also billed for pages that did not exist.

Stine and Probst even billed the Cherokee County Clerk of Superior Court for transcripts that had not been filed with the court, the DA’s office said.

Under state law, the Judicial Council of Georgia regulates the number of characters per line and the number of lines per page on official court transcripts. It also establishes the per-page rate at which court reporters are to be paid. In 2006, the rate was $3.57 per page.

The women on Dec. 18, 2014, were each indicted on one count of racketeering, which alleges a pattern of criminal activity.

“This was essentially a scheme to manipulate transcripts and invoices to collect more than was due,” said Chief Assistant District Attorney Don Geary, who prosecuted the case.

Canton attorney Daran Burns represented Stine. Woodstock attorney Tony Morgese represented Probst and Petersen.

The investigation started in July 2014 after Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace asked the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office to look into possible court reporter billing irregularities.

Investigators with the sheriff’s office determined that the suspects were “intentionally mis-formatting court records and were billing the county for pages that did not exist,“ sheriff’s office spokesperson Lt. Jay Baker said in September.

State Attorney General Sam Olens appointed Reynolds or his designee as the “district attorney pro tempore of the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit for purposes of prosecuting this case.”

Wallace previously told Patch that she and her staff were potential witnesses in the case, which propelled her to voluntarily recuse herself from the prosecution of the case.

(Photo: Former court reporters (from left) Betty Petersen, Kimberly Probst and Tammy Stine, all of Woodstock, have been indicted on one count each of violating Georgia’s RICO Act Credit: Cherokee Sheriff’s Office)